The U.S. Census Bureau is the only source of information on the number of births in, and migrations to the United States of America. The population and population increase decade to decade.

Second, the period of the Great Depression, 1930 to 1940, as shown in the 1940 census was a more dramatic drop in population growth than any other period in our history, including the Civil War when we lost people on both sides. The people from the Thirties are now retiring. And this smaller number have been doing their share to carry the Social Security system for the last forty or fifty years, without a problem. How do you explain that?

In short, about the only thing that the extra births after WWII did was to put our rate of population growth back on track.

Also, remember that the bureaucrat’s definition of a pay-as-you-go system is the same as any small business (what the government defines as less than 500 employees). If you don’t generate enough to pay your employees, you go under. At least, you do if you don’t have a sufficient cash reserve to tide you over rough times.

Social Security’s biggest problem is that it was taken off the pay-as-you-go system in 1983, thanks to Alan Greenspan, Bob Dole, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Claude Pepper, Bob Barr and others on the Greenspan Commission. Since that time, it has been on a “partial reserve” system which would have been fine if the reserve had been invested wisely. It wasn’t.

Social Security’s “surplus” has been consistently stolen by Congress and the Administration and spent elsewhere. The Social Security Trust Fund is then stuffed with bogus babble bonds that represent nothing more than double taxation. When necessary to withdraw any of these markers, money will have to be taken from current income tax receipts made by the very same people who contributed the surplus in the first place, or their children. What I call the “Pay-It-Again, Sam” plan.

Social Security’s only major problem is the government itself. A dishonest government that steals its reserve every year, spends it on frivolous things, and then sets up a black hole debit mechanism to tax workers again.

If you think President George W. Bush is going to do anything different, then you’re naïve. He’s now talking about continuing the Clinton policy of using Social Security’s “surplus” or reserve to pay down the government’s debt. For every dollar you contribute, the government saves six or seven cents.

An honest government would be investing Social Security, Medicare, gas tax and other “surpluses” in anything but bogus bonds. Bonds considered “the safest investment in the world” only because they are backed by every taxpayer in America. The same people who contributed the surplus in the first place.

An honest government would stop throwing our surplus back at us in the form of debt.

Related article